My excursion into the realm of torture ends this week with an Urban Explorer column that ruminates on my waterboarding experience.

It’s been an interesting several days explaining to people what waterboarding is and why I decided to endure it. Just last night, The Bleepin’ Truth interviewed me on their weekly talk show (I’ll give a link when it comes available).

But before the buzz dies down, there are a couple points that didn’t make it into the final article:

* I am no trailblazer in the world of waterboarded reporters. Fox News correspondent Steve Harrigan and Current TV’s Kaj Larsen have both been waterboarded on camera. And from the looks of those videos, they endured more torture than I.

* Michael Nance, the counterterrorism consultant and former Navy Seal instructor who I quote in my article, says the waterboarding that Ruppert and I experienced was “field expedient water treatment” and not the actual technique used in interrogations. (Dennis Ruppert, the former anti-terrorism specialist who was waterboarded with me, says there are several different techniques used by the military. The Bleepin' Truth crew said they consulted "advisors from the military and State Department.)

“You really do not want to see a professional one being done,” Nance wrote in an e-mail last week. “… By the time you figure out you are under the process, you are fully involved in trying to survive.”

I don’t doubt him a bit

This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2008.